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Introduction

Applications typically use the Registry in one or two ways. The most common
is to use it as a repository of application-specific information, such as user
preferences. The type of information that the applications store depends on how
the developers chose the keys to organize their applications' information.
A second approach that application developers use with the Registry is to create
an application that presents a user interface to the Registry entries that other
programs can create and use. Several of the Control Panel applets work using
this approach. These applications relieve you from having to edit the Registry
manually to change system attributes.

If you are interested in seeing how the Registry stores the attributes of any
given application, use regedit to start the Windows XP Registry Editor and go to
the location HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software to see the list of companies that have
applications installed on your system. You'll also notice there are subkeys
for each of the versions of products you have installed on your system. Be sure
not to change any of these subkey values because it could cause the application
to not work.

Given the two approaches software developers have for working with the
Registry, there's no real surprise that the first one is most often defined
upfront during the install process for many applications. The second approach is
most often used for handling system-level utilities.

Moving an Application using regedit

As your systems fill up with applications, it's often necessary to move
an application's location from one folder to another, or from one physical
drive to another. One approach is to uninstall the application and then
reinstall it in the new location. The trouble with this approach is that you
lose all the preferences defined with the previous installation. It's back
to square one to define the preferences you want in your applications.
There's got to be a better way, and it's called working with the
Registry.

Suppose that you need to move an application from C:/AppDir to E:/AppDir
after installing a new E: drive in your system. The first step is to move all
the data files over. Don't move the application files; Registry subkeys
will handle that. Follow the series of steps shown here for moving the location
of an application from one physical location to another:

Open the Windows XP Registry Editor from the command line by typing
regedit from the Run command line.

Select Find from the Edit menu.

Type C:\AppDir, and press Enter. The Registry Editor searches for
the Registry entry that contains C:\AppDir, and selects the first one it
finds.

Press Enter to edit the value's data.

Type in the new folder name, which will be D\AppDir, as defined
before, and press Enter.

Now press F3 to continue the search. You need to change every location in
which C:\AppDir is shown to reflect D:\AppDir. After that task is completed, the
application will be changed to this location.

You can go back to the Registry and check to make sure the change has
been accepted.